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Spotify offline functionality - anyone got it working?

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bulldoze

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 15, 2011
229
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I have heard this works but I can't for the life of me figure out how.

I have spotify premium. Apple Watch 6, iPhone 11 and everything is up to date. Online guides suggest I should be able to tap on the 3 dots and a download to Apple Watch option will appear but I have never seen that.

Any idea what I am doing wrong? I have waited years for this option.
 
i heard that they are still testing this feature out (only available for some users) and will be made available to all users once its fully functional.
 
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I got Spotify to work, I didn't do anything, it just start streaming, not sure how. I have an Apple Watch 6 with GSM, so I believe is streaming the data through the network. It doesn't seem that Spotify has saved any of my playlists locally on the phone.

What troubles me is that I found the audio quality terrible; I'm using Bose headphones and the audio quality was very poor with a lot of distortion and audio clipping. My headphones perform fine with my iPhone or the laptop/desktop, so I believe the quality of the stream that Spotify is streaming through the Apple Watch is probably their "low" setting, equivalent to approximately 24kbit/s, and it doesn't seem to be an option to change this setting. It is possible Spotify is not to blame on this, as it is likely Apple to have set restrictions on the bandwidth so the processor does not overload
 
Surprisingly, I got a notification on my spotify app (iPhone) to try dowloading my playlists on my AW.

I tried downloading two playlists and, I think that the iPhone must be with a good battery percentage to transfer the songs. I' run more tests regarding quality, but apparently, offline music quality on AW from Spotify is poor.

If that matters, I own a iPhone 11, AW SE and Powerbeats 4.
 
Absolute vapour ware. Spotify made the announcement in March and said “rolling out globally over the next two weeks”. Well it’s the end of May now and still no sign of AW downloads for me (I am a premium member), and no further update from spotify. I think they probably wanted to curb the wave of new Apple Watch owners from transferring to Apple Music and just put out this announcement with no plans to actually follow it up. What a joke of a company.
 
I
gustavo.gibo said:
Surprisingly, I got a notification on my spotify app (iPhone) to try dowloading my playlists on my AW.

I tried downloading two playlists and, I think that the iPhone must be with a good battery percentage to transfer the songs. I' run more tests regarding quality, but apparently, offline music quality on AW from Spotify is poor.

If that matters, I own a iPhone 11, AW SE and Powerbeats 4.
Click to expand...
I Have the impression that in order to get the Spotify playlist load on your AW, the AW need to be on the charger and the phone in close proximity.
 
It only downloads 50 songs per playlist for me. Anyone knows if this is a limitation, setting or bug?
 
coolajami said:
I

I Have the impression that in order to get the Spotify playlist load on your AW, the AW need to be on the charger and the phone in close proximity.
Click to expand...
Nope. Just tried here. Phone and watch both on 67%, I've send a playlist to be downloaded to AW, and the transfer is happening, none of them charging at the moment.
 
gustavo.gibo said:
Nope. Just tried here. Phone and watch both on 67%, I've send a playlist to be downloaded to AW, and the transfer is happening, none of them charging at the moment.
Click to expand...

Spotify instructions below:
on the iPhone Spotify app you get into your playlist and on the top of the library, go where the three dots are (top of screen), select the dots, and there is an option "download on the Apple Watch".

That doesn't work for me over GSM network or through hotspot connection. I have the impression that both the AW and the iPhone may have to be in the same WiFi network. Unfortunately I cannot confirm this today as I am on the move.


Spotify on Apple Watch - Spotify

support.spotify.com support.spotify.com
 
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Well I'm officially defeated on this.
I've tried any possible setup (AW on charge, same WiFi network with the iPhone, proximity etc) and I cannot get to download any playlists on my AW. I can still play songs through network though.
I just don't get what I'm doing wrong. On Apple Music, you just choose the song, load on AW, boom, done.
 
TheMixam said:
Apple Watch needs to be charging for the transfer to happen.
Click to expand...

Perhaps you misunderstood. I’m using Spotify on my Apple Watch. Offline. I selected playlists and a podcast to be sent to the watch. Both phone and AW were on 67%. Not charging. The playlists and the podcasts were downloaded. It’s much better than Apple Music in this point.
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coolajami said:
Well I'm officially defeated on this.
I've tried any possible setup (AW on charge, same WiFi network with the iPhone, proximity etc) and I cannot get to download any playlists on my AW. I can still play songs through network though.
I just don't get what I'm doing wrong. On Apple Music, you just choose the song, load on AW, boom, done.
Click to expand...
do you see the button ‘download to apple watch’ or is it missing?
 
coolajami said:
It’s completely missing.
Click to expand...
Then it seems like the feature didn't roll out to you yet. You'll be notified in the Spotify iOS app when it's available to you by showing you how to download some generic workout playlist to your Apple Watch.
 
TheMixam said:
Then it seems like the feature didn't roll out to you yet. You'll be notified in the Spotify iOS app when it's available to you by showing you how to download some generic workout playlist to your Apple Watch.
Click to expand...

thanks. I simply assumed that because I can stream Spotify on my AW, the option for downloading playlists would be available to me. Apparently streaming and downloading playlists offline are two different things.
 
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